What have we here? It seems as if HTC has just filed a new phone with FCC for testing. The test setup photos from A Test Lab Techno Corp. (ATL) show that HTC is in fact working on another horizontal slider style device, and from the looks of the hardware, the device will run Android (it sports a home key rather than the generic Windows home key).

The device, model number PC70110, looks to have an optical trackpad similar to that on the upcoming Desire but more oval than circular.  Tests indicate that this device will support 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and it appears to be heading to AT&T and possibly some Canadian carriers based on its support for 3G bands II and V.  A letter from HTC to FCC included in the filing states that the device will not support VoIP and that the it has not been rated for hearing aid compatibility with respect to the Wi-Fi capability.

I have to say, the device is looking pretty good despite the color scheme. I’ve never been a big fan of bright colors on my phone, but throw some different colors on this device, make alternate designs for different demographics, and this device could spell success.  With a lot of HTC fans are soon looking to replace their G1, this very well may be the full QWERTY horizontal slider they’ve all been waiting for.

No word could be found on whether the device has been passed just yet or not, but we will keep you posted as we get more information on it.

A special thanks goes out to our very own Ari Robbins for uncovering this little gold mine!

FCC Information

The Obama Administration has not been lax in patroling the US-Mexico border, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insisted to the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

Napolitano, also a former governor of Arizona, said, “I know that border i think as well as anyone. It is as secure now as it has ever been.”

The Secretary is trying to deflect the argument that a porous border forced Arizona to pass a controversial immigration law last week.

But Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who signed the law last week that will make it a crime under state law to be in the US illegally, says the administration is not doing enough to stop the influx of illegal immigrants and drugs.

Brewer says she has sent 5 letters to President Obama, and spoken to him personally about the deteriorating border situation.  She says her entreaties have “been met with complete, total  disrespect to the people of Arizona. I mean, we don’t even get an answer back in regards to securing our border. So, given that, i think that it was time that Arizonans did step up.”

The White House said today that President Obama wants to take a “hard long look” at the law, and has directed the Justice Department to examine its options.

Attorney General Eric Holder said, “We are considering all possibilities including the possibility of a court challenge.”

But Republicans say a majority of Arizonans want this law.

“It has a 70-percent approval in Arizona,” according to House Minority Leader John Boehner, who continued, “I think that we ought to respect the people of Arizona and their right to make their own decisions.”

The law is set to go into effect in mid-summer.

Over four months after President Obama missed his self-imposed deadline to shutter the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, approximately 180 detainees remain behind the wire and within the walls of the seven camps that comprise Camp Delta. All have been there for years on end: The most recent detainee arrived in 2007. Most have never been charged with any crime or wartime offense. One of the few who has, Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has spent his teenage years and early 20s in Guantanamo since 2002, will dispatch his lawyers tomorrow morning for a pre-trial hearing seeking to ban what they contend is coerced testimony from his military commission for murder and material support for terrorism. Some detainees have even been cleared for release: Fewer than ten Uighur detainees (the military does not disclose the specific number) remain in a facility called Camp Iguana, where they are considered “residents” and not detainees, as their release has been ordered by U.S. courts but no country has agreed to take them in.

It’s unclear when the Obama administration will actually close the facility. There’s a possibility it could still carry out the closure before the end of the year: The Defense Department has asked Congress for $350 million for all aspects of closing the Guantanamo detention facility and purchasing a new Illinois prison to house the residual population that has yet to be tried or repatriated (as well as about 48 detainees the administration seeks to hold in indefinite detention). It has placed the money in the politically potent request for funding operations in the Afghanistan war. That choice itself reflects the bipartisan resistance in Congress to actually closing the facility, despite both party’s presidential candidates in 2008 running on a pledge to end an international symbol of infamy.

Accordingly, a group of reporters toured a few of Camp Delta’s nine facilities today to get a highly constrained glimpse of residual life in Guantanamo Bay. The military command has reviewed every photograph presented here to prevent inadvertent disclosures of classified information; seven photographs I took were deleted.

A rare glimpse between two outer layers of security surrounding Camp 5 and Camp 6, two facilities modeled on prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Recently-relaxed rules for restricting photography now allow some visual representation of the shoreline. We did not get to see Camp 7, a facility containing high value detainees. “We do acknowledge there’s a Camp 7,” said Lt. Col. Andrew McManus, the deputy commander of the Joint Detention Group, which oversees detention operations. “That’s all we say about it.” When I asked if the 14 detainees at Guantanamo Bay who arrived in September 2006 from undisclosed prisons run by the CIA — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators — lived in communal housing or are held in individual cells, McManus replied, “I know nothing about that whatsoever.”

A detainee jogs around the central recreation yard in Camp 4, a communal-housing facility for detainees who comply with guards’ orders. When he saw a group of reporters taking pictures of the area, he yelled out in English, “Put me beside bin Laden!” The consensus of the press corps was he was joking.

Two contrasting images from an area in Camp 4 used for holding educational classes. With the exception of the prayer mat, the recreational materials on this table — the Soduko book, the art supplies and the magazines — are comfort items provided to help “compliant” detainees at Camp 4 while away the time. In the makeshift classroom, detainees watch DVDs — some are said to be partial to Jackie Chan movies and the Alaskan fishing show “Deadliest Catch” — as well as attending art and language and “life skill” courses. But across the floor in the classroom are small metal eyebolts used to shackle detainees to their seats during the classes. “For the safety of the instructor, the detainees are shackled,” McManus explained.

Camp 6, modeled on a Michigan prison, is a $37 million facility consisting of eight blocks of 22 cells. It’s a communal-living facility, meaning detainees live with each other, although there are several cells that aren’t big enough for more than a single occupant. Here, a detainee — a slight man, maybe about 5 foot 5 — ambles over from a common area to speak amiably with a guard, who’s separated from the detainee by a schoolyard-fence style barrier. I was allowed to publish these photographs because I blurred the detainee’s faces.

This is the ceiling of a single-occupancy detainee’s cell in H Block in Camp 6, just above the toilet. I laid down on the concrete platform set up for a detainee’s bed to get a sense of what might be the last thing he sees before going to sleep at night.

Another shot from the recreation yard at Camp 4. The only towers we’re allowed to photograph are those with guards manning them, and only then if the guard’s face isn’t able to be determined. Similarly, the crouching detainee below pulled the collar of his shirt above his nose, obscuring his face enough so that a photograph of the scene could clear a security review.

We weren’t allowed inside this Camp 4 facility. While there’s no indication this behavior persists at Guantanamo, early in the detention facility’s existence, behavioral-science teams were involved in abusive interrogation and detention operations, as a Senate Armed Services Committee report in 2008 meticulously documented. There haven’t been accounts of behaviorally-enhanced interrogations for years. “We have visitors here every day of the week,” McManus said, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A view of the American flag through the perimeter fences around Camp 4 and Camp 5. A Toronto Star journalist remarked that it was probably the single most photographed American flag around. Then she snapped some pictures.

Look, bullying is obviously a serious issue, but the idea of a video game that targets bullying sounds pretty absurd. It’ll just give more fuel to bullies! “What did you play last night, GTA4?” “No, an anti-bullying game.” More »

Finviz’s map of the futures market is super helpful on a day like today.

We see three green spots on this map. What are they?

Yen, dollars, and gold. It doesn’t get more flight-to-safety than that.

Join the conversation about this story »

Congratulations to Archos 5 users on finally getting the full Android Market!

The Archos 5 has slowly and steadily been building into a nice tablet experience, but with so many bigger and better tablets on the horizon this news is most exciting as a bellwether for Android tablets to come.

The limited number of Android tablets that we have seen released to date have offered either no access to the Android Market or access that was limited to free apps. As those Android users in countries that still don’t have access to the paid Market will tell you this can be quite frustrating.

We know that Android tablets coming in the second half of this year will compete favorably with and in many cases surpass the iPad where hardware specifications are concerned, but that is really only half the battle. As we saw in the early days of the Android Market, developers are not likely to flock to a platform that only allows them to hock their wares for free and users balk at devices that doesn’t offer quality content (I’m not suggesting free content can’t be of high quality, but there is a perception issue there).

With the knowledge that Google is at work on their own Android tablet we can rest assured that the underlying OS will be optimized for the larger form factor devices and it stood to reason that they would bring the full Android Market along for the ride, but it is good to see this rolling out now with time to work out the kinks before Android tablets start to become more mainstream.

The addition of the Android Market is a good step, but it is not the most user friendly experience at the moment and with the meteoric growth of the Market, along with this new category of device assuredly bringing more and different apps along with it, Google might finally be forced to take a more direct hand in cleaning it up.

What steps do you think Google should be taking to improve the Market as it pertains to accessibility in general and to handle the inevitable addition of apps that are geared more specifically to tablet devices?

Related Posts

• Canadians like to buy Android apps. Will they be able to sell them soon?
• Welcome to the wonderful world of paid apps Canada!
• Dell roadmap leaks part 2: Netbook and tablet edition
• New Android Market appears in 2.2 firmware
• Dell Looking Glass tablet features Tegra 2

From Green Right Now Reports

Climate deniers will just have to grit their teeth over the latest report from the EPA showing that climate change is having a current, measurable effect on the Earth.

While this has been news for a while, the EPA’s Climate Change Indicators report, released Tuesday, gathers up the latest stats on heat waves, storms, sea level measurements and glacier melts.  All point to a planet under duress.

The agency tracks 24 climate change indicators, and these show that “climate change is a very real problem with impacts already being seen,” said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.

Some of the report’s findings:

• Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are increasing and rose by about 14 percent in the U.S. between 1990 and 2008.

• Average temperatures are rising, with seven of the top 10 warmest years on record in the continental United States occurring since 1990.

• Tropical cyclone intensity has increased in recent decades with six of the 10 most active hurricane seasons have occurred since the mid-1990s.

• Sea levels are rising, and have risen twice as fast as the long term trend since 1993 to 2008.

• Glaciers are melting and the volume of glaciers appears to be diminishing faster over the last decade. (This makes sense, given the warmer temperature trends and the actual disappearance of glaciers, such as two that have gone extinct in Glacier National Park. That national park could become a microcosm of the environmental downward spiral that can be initiated by such changes.).

• The frequency of heat waves has risen steadily since the 1960s.

Those who want to know more should check out the slide show detailing the highlights of the report, supported with graphs and photography. This non-geek, quickie review of climate change in action hits the salient points without getting into an IPCC-level discussion.

For instance, it notes that arctic sea ice is being lost because the oceans and surface air is warming. And as the oceans warm, the ice melt accelerates. The summer arctic melts become more severe, which contributes to rising oceans and a loss of the snow cap that helps reflect the sun’s rays. See the circular problem? This is one of the “feed backs” that scientists refer to when they discuss the tipping points and urgency of dealing with climate change now. The EPA slide show doesn’t get into all that, but does note that the “extent” or reach of sea ice was 24 percent below the average for the 1980s and 1990s. The picture really says it all:

The EPA’s slide show, aimed at a general audience, makes several other concepts understandable without the scientific jargon. It’s slide show on rising temperatures shows that the thermometer isn’t rising uniformly, but in a pattern designed by Mother Nature.

But that doesn’t mean that climate change has been engineered by natural events. It’s clearly the result of human activities, which have pushed the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heat-trapping levels never before experienced in human history. That’s covered in the slide show also.

See more info from the EPA about climate change on the agency’s website.

Building webscale or cloud applications is hampered by figuring out ways to spread tasks out over thousands of computers without slowing things down, or requiring too many people to keep things running. Virtualization and faster storage helps, as do new databases (GigaOM Pro sub req’d) and caching techniques, but right now folks are trying to adapt how they program computers to reflect that one has now become many.

Bloom, a programming language created at the University of California, Berkeley by a group led by Joseph Hellerstein is one such effort. Bloom was profiled this week as one of the top 10 emerging technologies by MIT’s Technology Review, because it could help cloud computing continue to scale. Here’s how, according to Technology Review:

The challenge is that these languages process data in static batches. They can’t process data that is constantly changing, such as readings from a network of sensors. The solution, ­Hellerstein explains, is to build into the language the notion that data can be dynamic, changing as it’s being processed. This sense of time enables a program to make provisions for data that might be arriving later — or never.

Hellerstein also gave an extensive interview to HPC in the Cloud this week about what Bloom is and the problem it’s trying to solve. From that interview:

To put it simply, our what our work is trying to do is start with the data itself and get people to talk about what should happen to the data step-by-step through a program without ever having them specify at all how many machines are involved. So, when you ask a query of a database you describe what data you want—not how to get it.

The interview lays out how this programming effort  came about (building network protocols) and who might care most about using Bloom (Amazon, Google or anyone with big data needs), but for me the best part of the interview was how Hellerstein underscored that the ability to harness a hell of a lot of servers and treat them as a single computer is the next big shift in information technology.

We can call it cloud computing, webscale applications or merely bigger data centers, but the key element here is that the hardware has gone social in ways that require many-to-many ways of communication and delivering instructions to the processors — inside the servers, between the servers, and soon, between data centers. The exciting aspect of this shift is that while larger companies like Google, Yahoo and Amazon are innovating, there is plenty of room for startups with a new appliance, server, networking technology or a chunk of code to make waves — and hopefully money.

For more on the effort, please check out the FAQ’s Hellerstein has posted on his blog.

Image courtesy of Flickr user tibchris

The best apps for any Google platform—like say, Android—are almost inevitably written by Google. Now Google’s bought a little app company called LabPixies, that makes widgets and games for Android and iGoogle, so expect more. [Google via Cnet] More »

by Jonathan Hiskes

They’re trying a dome
because the robots didn’t work. No, really. Damage control for the oil-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is sounding like a bad
science-fiction movie:

Engineers are crafting a giant underwater dome to help to
contain an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after attempts to shut off the leak
using robotic submarines failed.

… While the robots continued their efforts one mile down
and a new rig arrived to drill into the leaking well and plug it in an
operation that could take months, BP said that its dome should trap the
escaping oil and funnel it to tanks on the surface.

The 11 workers missing
after the oil-rig explosion are presumed dead, and the leaking oil is expected to reach the Louisiana
coast as early as Saturday. The spill is 48 miles at its widest, 39 miles at
its longest and has a circumference of 600 miles, according to reports.

And:

Louisiana is one month away from opening its inshore
shrimping season, its crab season is just starting and oyster beds could be
closed if the oil gets into coastal estuaries.

As The Wall Street Journal reports,
this sort of casts a pall over BP’s fantastic quarterly earnings report, which beat
analysts’ forecasts by 18 percent.

At the G20 meeting in
Pittsburgh last fall, President Obama promised to scale back government subsidies to the fossil-fuel industries: “I will work
with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies so that we can
better address our climate challenge.”

The continuing Louisiana
disaster provides a favorable political climate to make good on that pledge.

Related Links:

Senate Dem leader vows action on both climate and immigration

14 buildings compete to be the Biggest Loser (of energy waste)

Kerry says climate bill is not dead

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

First announced just two weeks after Windows Embedded Standard 2009 was released, Windows Embedded Standard 7 has at last been released to manufacturers, Microsoft announced today. The company says that new devices built on the platform should be arriving soon, and that we should expect to see some “exciting developments” in Windows 7 consumer devices at Computex in June.

Though Windows Embedded Standard 7 can be used in dozens of different environments such as digital signage, thin clients, and industrial control systems, Microsoft has emphasized the value of this version to connected set-top boxes, TVs, and media players.

“The addition of the Windows Media Center feature in Windows Embedded Standard 7 is driving the set-top box, connected media device and TV markets by providing OEMs with opportunities to develop uniquely branded experiences and service providers with capabilities to explore additional revenue streams with unique content through a centralized media hub in the home,” Kevin Dallas, general manager of the Windows Embedded Business Unit at Microsoft said in a statement today.

While the video shown above does present a compelling user experience, Microsoft’s list of Windows Embedded Standard 7 partners today included: AOpen Inc., C-nario, DT Research Inc., Micro Industries Inc. and YCD Multimedia (for digital signage) HP and Wyse Technology (for thin clients) and Heber Ltd. for industrial control systems. There were no home entertainment product partners even mentioned today. Microsoft’s Embedded Group lists 28 different companies as OEM partners for set-top box production.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

The US Chamber of Commerce (which many people mistakenly think is a government organization — it’s not) has a long history of getting the facts wrong about intellectual property. The folks at the Chamber of Commerce have one basic mission, which is to protect the big businesses that fund it. And what better way to do that then to have the government help give them monopoly rights and then enforce those rights. The latest is that it has released a report which it falsely claims proves that stricter IP enforcement would boost the economy. But that’s not what the report actually says. The Chamber of Commerce hired NPD Group to write this report, and you can read the results yourself (pdf). It’s significantly weaker than even the most ridiculous studies we’ve seen in the past.

Basically, what the report does is talk about “IP-intensive industries,” noting that they have created a lot of jobs. Then it picks twelve random “non-IP-intensive industries” and notes that they spend less on R&D and have lost jobs. That’s it. But the conclusions it comes to are not supported by the facts. It takes several logical leaps as follows:

• Because an industry is considered “IP-intensive” it is only successful because of intellectual property laws. That’s simply not true. In fact, a study by CCIA showed that exceptions to intellectual property law contribute more to the economy in those industries than the IP law itself. The problem here is falsely assuming that any kind of “IP-intensive industry” is only possible or only successful because of intellectual property. And yet, the actual research suggests that the vast majority of that economic activity, while perhaps in “IP-intensive” industries has little, if anything, to do with intellectual property law or its enforcement.
• Second, it assumes, but does nothing to support, the idea that stronger enforcement increases output in “IP-intensive” industries. In fact, actual research has shown the opposite to be true — and that in cases where weaker enforcement occurs, output and economic activity increase.
• It assumes that because the industries it picked contributed more jobs to the economy, that’s because of intellectual property law. Yet, there’s little evidence to support this basic claim. In fact, history has shown that increasing IP strictness often decreases jobs by limiting competition.
• Finally, the report also assumes that IP-intensive industries are on the rise because of intellectual property law, not other massive shifts in the global market. Of course knowledge industries are growing in the US as agricultural and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere. But that’s not because of intellectual property law. It’s because of the natural progression of the economy. That the “non-IP intensive industries” it randomly chose to include (things like wood, textile, and paper) are on the decline is not due to intellectual property law at all. Claiming it does, as the report implies, is incredibly intellectually dishonest.

The report is a joke, based on a series of faulty assumptions. Tragically, the US Chamber of Commerce still gets attention, despite the fact that its claims pushing for stronger IP laws would do a lot more harm than good for most US business and innovation.

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We don’t normally put expletives in our headlines, but when a Senator says the word nearly a dozen times in an open hearing, who are we to argue? And, we have to admit, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) certainly makes a compelling case when he reads back Goldman Sachs internal emails and concludes that the company’s “top priority was selling that shitty deal.”

The deal in question involved a fund called Timberwolf, which was called “shitty” in internal company emails, and which lost 80% of its value within months of being issued. Despite the apparently accurate characterization of the fund, Goldman told its sales force that pitching Timberwolf to clients was a “top priority.”

In hearings before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Levin pushed Daniel Sparks, the former head of Goldman Sachs’ Mortgage Department, to admit that the company knowingly sold low-quality investments to its clients.

“You knew it was a shitty deal and that’s what your e-mails show. How much of this shitty deal did you continue to sell to your clients?” Sparks declined to answer, and did his best to avoid repeating the term.

In addition to Sparks, today’s hearings included testimony by trader Fabrice Tourre, who vowed to defend himself against the “false claim” that he defrauded investors, and CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Most denied any wrongdoing, echoing Sparks’ claim that the company made some “poor business decisions,” but didn’t do anything wrong. “Regret to me means something that you feel that you did wrong, and I don’t have that,” he said. As Levin might say, “Shitty.”

Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks [Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]

You’ll recall that a few weeks ago, we interviewed the IMF on why it had blocked investor Eric Sprott’s attempt to buy gold from the fund. We then spoke with Eric Sprott and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, better known as GATA for their take on the matter.

Along the way, both GATA and Sprott suggested we ask the IMF some questions that the fund has avoided answering in the past. So we did. They were:

• What are the incentives for the IMF not to sell gold on the open market or to investors, be it institutional or retail?
• What are the designated depositories for gold?
• Did gold physically change hands with the banks you have sold to so far or was the transaction basically bookkeeping stuff (the IMF still holds the physical gold in this case)?
• Are there available records on the actual serial numbers of bullion? How is the gold at the IMF tracked and accounted for?
• When the IMF says it will “phase out” the sal of available gold, could you be more specific? What amount of gold in regard to what amount of time.
• Does IMF support a need for total transparency in the sale of gold despite the effects it could have on various markets?

The official response from Alistair Thomson, the IMF’s media guy, was:

“I looked through your message; we don’t have anything more for you on this.”

Interesting, considering the IMF refused to answer similar questions posed by GATA and Sprott. Some are perfectly reasonable questions too, like did gold physically change hands? What does the term “phase out” actually mean?

Certainly this unwillingness is only fodder for skeptical gold folks out there.

Join the conversation about this story »

Posted by Hal Dardick at 3:03 p.m.



Thousands of apartment dwellers who stand to lose security deposits because of building foreclosures would get their money back under a proposed ordinance a City Council committee approved today.

Mayor Richard Daley’s proposal would require all lien holders — typically banks — in foreclosure cases to pay back security deposits to tenants who are pushed out of their homes.

Under current city law, the landlord and not the lien holder is responsible for paying back the security deposit. That often doesn’t happen, said Ellen Sahli, first deputy commissioner of the Community Development Department.

Last year, more than 8,500 rental units were affected by foreclosures, according to city statistics. With an average security deposit of $860, up to $7.3 million was lost, Sahli said.

Ald. Bernie Stone, 50th, proposed an amendment that would have given landlords 14 days to remedy alleged landlord-tenant ordinance violations related to the handling of security deposits.

As it now stands, if a landlord returns a security deposit just one day late, and the tenant sues, the landlord must pay twice the security deposit, court costs and legal fees, according to supporters of the amendment.



But critics said the 14-day remedy period would encourage landlords not to comply unless someone filed a formal complaint during that period.

“The amendment proposed by Ald. Stone today would, I believe, benefit landlords at the expense of tenants the (landlord-tenant ordinance) has protected for over 25 years,” Sahli said.

After hours of testimony from landlord and tenant organizations, the
committee sent Daley’s proposed ordinance to the full council for a vote next month, but failed to vote on Stone’s amendment.

Stone appointed a subcommittee to consider his amendment and an alternative offered by Ald. Helen Shiller, 46th, that would have only granted the 14-day remedy period to miscalculations of interest owed on security deposits.

Below are links to news stories of interest from newspapers that came up during a search today.  These links were active at the time of this e-mail, but should you want to save a story, printing it or cutting and pasting the entire article and saving it to your computer is recommended

 State News  

Daily Herald Pension Series  

Pension argument pits ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’   The difference in financial security between those with public pensions and those without has become glaringly visible during the ongoing recession, so much so that some in the “have not” camp are wondering why their tax dollars are going toward someone else’s pension while their own retirements are insecure.  

Editorial: Now is time for resolve, reason  Outrage against excesses in public pensions is warranted and understandable. But it also needs to be kept in perspective. 

In Post-Obama Illinois, Hope and Change  A school voucher bill wins strong bipartisan support.  The vehicle is an educational voucher bill that needs only the approval of the full Illinois house to land on the governor’s desk. Introduced by the Rev. James Meeks—a powerful Democratic state senator who has also been one of Mr. Obama’s spiritual advisers—the bill provides a voucher of up to $4,000 for as many as 22,000 elementary students now languishing in the worst Chicago public schools. The voucher will give them the opportunity to attend the private school of their choice. The state Senate passed the measure last month, and last week the leadership-dominated House Executive Committee approved it by a vote of 10 to 1. 

Schools districts may get state OK to issue bonds for buildings without voter approval
Chicago Tribune – the Hinsdale board didn’t transfer the money directly. Instead it parked the cash in the district’s main education fund before moving it to building funds. “Money-laundering,” one outraged school board member called it. According to court filings, 95 school districts in Cook, DuPage and Will counties sold nearly $800 million in working cash bonds between 2000 and 2008 for building   

Charleston teachers, district reach pact
Journal&Gazette Times-Courier – A tentative agreement on a new contract for Charleston school district teachers was reached Sunday night.A joint announcement from the Charleston Education Association teachers union and the school board said the tentative contract was finalized after an 11.5-hour negotiating session. It said the contract will go to union members for ratification   

Great that band played at rally  Letter to the Editor – mid page  – As the proud parent of a member of the Springfield High School Marching Band, it was disappointing to read the front page “Exclusive” in The State Journal-Register’s Saturday edition: “Should SHS band have played at pro-tax rally?” The headline and accompanying story were inaccurate, under-researched and inappropriately placed in the SJ-R’s news section. For the record, the Illinois Education Association invited the SHS band to perform at the “Save Our State” rally. IEA agreed in advance to reimburse the district for any expenses incurred  

OUR VIEW: Tax increase won’t solve problems
Freeport Journal Standard – With all due respect to local teachers, we think Governor Quinn’s idea of raising taxes is a mistake, unless he and the leaders of our State Legislature get serious about spending cuts. Teachers traveled to Springfield   

The legislators-are-chicken premise
Chicago Tribune – read “Thousands rally at Illinois Capitol — for a tax increase.” A subhead could have read, “Millions more stay at home, fuming at the very idea.” Last week’s Springfield rally of 15,000 “teachers, students, state workers, health care providers, and concerned citizens” organized by the Responsible Budget Coalition shouted “Raise my taxes” — which was a neat public relations trick 

University lobbies for change
Chicago Flame – An estimated 300 students, faculty, alumni, and administrators from the University of Illinois traveled to Springfield last week to participate in lobby day and push for increased public higher education funding in next year’s budget — and for the university to pay the 58% of the total appropriation the state owes to the University of Illinois.   

Tennis court work among projects added to Ball-Chatham school repairs
Springfield State Journal Register – with the teachers union on a new contract should wrap up before the school year ends, School Superintendent Bob Gillum said Monday. The current four-year contract with the Ball-Chatham Education Association expires this year. Bargaining has been under way since March, and another session is scheduled for May 5. “Our intent is to complete the process   

Parents speak out for dismissed teacher during Cuba School Board meeting
Canton Daily Ledger – President Sue McCance called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. Under the recognition of the public, a large group of parents and community members were present to speak on behalf of released teacher Amanda Rath. Several parents express their surprise of the release of Rath since they feel she is a wonderful teacher and has done much for their children.   

Lincoln Magnet computer program threatened by loss of funding
Springfield State Journal Register – For the past few years, Springfield’s Lincoln Magnet School has carved out a niche as a top-performing, technology-centered middle school. But the state’s education-funding crisis   

Most Champaign schools will receive more money for building budgets
Champaign News Gazette – schools in Champaign will get a little more money next year in their building budgets. Chief Financial Officer Gene Logas talked about preliminary building budgets for next year at Monday’s school board meeting. “In a time when other districts are cutting building budgets, we feel good we didn’t have to resort to that,” Logas said.   

Unions push to exempt evaluations
Dixon Telegraph –  HB5154 is not the first rollback of the new FOIA law. Lawmakers approved a similar carve-out for teachers and principals as part of a deal with teachers unions for the federal Race to the Top education funding program. Illinois never received any Race to the Top money, but lawmakers made the FOIA change anyway. Now, Sharon Voliva with the Illinois Federation of Teachers said the union  

A cry for school funding fix in District U-46
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – a 17 percent decrease in state funding if Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget passes, U-46 in mid-march announced $30 million in cuts, including 1,100 employees. Along with the Stuecks, roughly 100 teachers, parents and students turned out to the South Elgin rally. Jaszczurowski, said she was inspired to organize it after writing letters to legislators about the school crisis and getting no response   

U High students will receive ‘netbooks’ next year
Bloomington Pantagraph – Next fall, University High School will become the first Central illinois school to provide a portable computer for every student. The Illinois State University laboratory school of 610 will provide a “netbook,” a smaller version of a computer laptop.

Lonergan takes down Facebook page
Jacksonville Journal Courier – Routt baseball coach Bob Lonergan has taken down his Facebook page. “Basically I took it down because of the kids,” Lonergan said Monday night. 

CPS budget calls for big boost in class size
Chicago Tribune – would raise some class sizes by as much as 25 percent, the result of a $600 million deficit for next school year. The specter of packed classrooms has fueled widespread anxiety among parents and teachers — but the worry may be premature. The CPS figures are based on a state budget few think will pass. That proposal from Gov. Pat Quinn would trim $1.3 billion from education   

NIU Names New Dean Of Education College
Chicago WBBH (CBS) 2 – undergraduate and graduate students and a faculty of more than 120. Neal has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in special education from the University of Texas at Austin. After working a social studies teacher in Texas, she joined the faculty at Southwestern University in Texas. 

Political News

Civic Federation rips Quinn’s proposed budget
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – A business-oriented government watchdog agency based in Chicago came out in opposition today to Gov. Quinn’s proposed 2011 state budget. The Civic Federation’s Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability released an analysis rejecting the budget “because it is unbalanced, relies too heavily on borrowing, doesn’t address $6.2 billion in unpaid bills, and would exacerbate the state’s structural   

Civic Federation: No support for Quinn budget
Quad Cities Dispatch Argus Leader – Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s “credit card” solution to the state’s budget is coming under fire from outside the Capitol. The Civic Federation, a Chicago-based business and tax policy organization,   

State needs leadership, budget cuts
Bloomington Pantagraph – By State Rep. Jack D. Franks – These days, Illinois is in desperate need of a multitude of things: an influx of jobs, a fully funded pension system, a winning baseball team. Yet, what Illinois needs most during this alarming period of our history is precedent-shattering leadership.   

Limiting spending is only solution
Champaign News Gazette Editorial – Illinois is trapped in a big hole, and one legislator has wisely advised his colleagues to stop digging deeper.  State Rep. Jack Franks, a Democrat from Marengo, has established himself clearly as an apostate among the Illinois political elite.  The veteran lawmaker recently wrote an op-ed for a Chicago newspaper that makes so much sense he’ll be lucky if most of his fellow legislators – Democrats or Republicans – ever speak to him again.   

No money, but Quinn signs bill to pay for guards
Decatur Herald and Review  – Although it remains unclear where the money will come from, Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation Monday aimed at making sure the state’s prison guards get paid in June. The stopgap spending measure was needed because the budget approved last summer was based on Quinn laying off hundreds of prison guards. But, the layoffs were blocked by the union representing the workers,  

Edgar says he’ll vote for Brady
Arlington Heights Daily – Despite recent criticism of Bill Brady’s budget plans, former Gov. Jim Edgar says he will vote for the Republican nominee for governor come November. Edgar previously called Brady’s across-the-board budget cutting ideas “naive” and had recommended he rethink his fiscal policies regarding bridging a $13 billion budget deficit.   

Cohen still considering run for governor  CHICAGO – The Illinois Democrat who quit the lieutenant governor’s race after winning the primary said Tuesday that he is considering a run for governor as an independent. During an interview on WLS Radio in Chicago, Scott Lee Cohen said he will make his decision sometime this week to run against Democratic Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican state senator Bill Brady.   

Senate eyes bill to weaken FOIA
Crystal Lake Northwest Herald – rather do that comprehensively and get input from all the parties at the table, as opposed to what we’re seeing now,” Althoff said. Supporters of the bill, such as unions representing teachers and public employees, say that evaluations will become worthless if they are public, and would contribute to hostile work environments because employees can FOIA one another’s evaluations   

Our Opinion: Don’t weaken revised FOIA
Springfield State Journal Register – The Senate vote on the revised FOIA law, May 28, 2009. “The events of the last year underline the importance of openness in government in Illinois.” — Gov. Pat Quinn, Aug. 17, 2009, on the day he signed the new FOIA law. LAST YEAR in the wake of disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest and indictment, Illinois lawmakers,   

Giannoulias says no one has asked him to step down
Decatur WAND (NBC) 17 – Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias (jeh-NOO’-lee-ehs) says no one from the Democratic Party has suggested he step aside following the failure last week of his family’s bank. Giannoulias said Monday at a cafe in Urbana the failure of his family’s bank on Friday gives him a better understanding of the economic struggles   

After Broadway, Giannoulias Tries to Focus on Main St.
Harrisburg WSIL (ABC) 3 –  U.S. Senate Candidate and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is trying to turn the attention away from Broadway by showing up on Main Street. Broadway Bank, which was started by Giannoulias? late father three decades ago, was heavy into real estate loans and lost $75 million last year. Federal regulators shut it down, along with seven other Illinois banks, on Friday.   

Giannoulias to appear with Obama in Quincy
Decatur WAND (NBC) 17  – Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias (jeh-NOO’-lee-ehs) says he’ll appear in Quincy Wednesday with President Barack Obama. He’ll be among other statewide officials to appear with the president when his “White House to Main Street Tour” stops in the Mississippi River town. That’s especially good news for Giannoulias,   

Palin heading to Illinois
Jacksonville Journal Courier – Sarah Palin has been out raising money for Republicans around the country and now she’s headed to Illinois. The Illinois Republican Party says the former vice presidential nominee will headline a party fundraiser May 12 in a Chicago suburb. Illinois Republicans don’t hold any statewide offices and the party is trying to win in some high-profile races this November. 

National News

 

Happy Meal toys: Are they helping make kids fat as well as happy?
Belleville News-Democrat  –  The proposed ban is the latest in a growing string of efforts to change the types of foods aimed at youngsters and the way they are cooked and sold. Across the nation, cities, states and school boards have taken aim at excessive sugar, salt and certain types of fats.  Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy

Wall Street Journal: Unions, States Clash in Race to Top

(Neil King Jr. & Stephanie Banchero, Op-Ed, National)

“The Obama administration’s signature education initiative has incited tense showdowns in states across the country as unions and state officials feud over strategies to compete for $3.4 billion in federal funding.”

New York Times: How to Lower the Burden of Student Loans

(Jennifer Schultz, Op-Ed, National)

“President Obama recently signed legislation that changes the federal student loan program. The new law eliminates fees to private bank intermediaries, expands Pell grants and makes it easier for students who borrow money, starting in July 2014, to pay it back.”

Financial overhaul blocked by GOP
Republicans voted unanimously Monday to block an effort to overhaul financial regulations from reaching the Senate floor, pledging to hold out for significant changes to the bill even as they acknowledged the political risk of appearing to obstruct a popular cause.
(By Brady Dennis and Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post)

A neighborhood watch, with guns
ARGHANDAB DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Taliban fighters used to swagger with impunity through this farming village, threatening to assassinate government collaborators. They seeded the main thoroughfare, a dirt road with moonlike craters, with land mines. They paid local men to attack U.S. and Afghan…
(By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post)

Suburbs trail D.C. in fighting AIDS, study says
Suburban governments lag behind the District in efforts to help slow the spread of AIDS even though they are home to nearly half of the Washington area residents infected with the disease, according to a study released Tuesday.
(By Darryl Fears, The Washington Post)

Both sides in immigration fight criticize Washington
PHOENIX — On the grounds of the Capitol, in a state that only days earlier had adopted the nation’s strictest anti-immigration law, the two sides of an angry debate are united on one thing: They blame Washington.
(By Peter Slevin, The Washington Post)

TIME.com Today’s Top Stories

Goldman Steels Itself for a Senate Grilling

The first objective for the seven current and former Goldman employees testifying will be to say nothing that could be potentially incriminating, but senators won’t pass up an opportunity to savage the firm

Jones’ Jewish Joke: No Laughing Matter, for Obama or Israel

A clumsy attempt at stereotype humor undermines the National Security Adviser’s effort to reassure those fearful of the Administration’s Mideast agenda

As Patrols Increase, Somali Pirates Widen Their Reach

Despite global efforts to reign them in, Somalia’s pirates are staging bold new attacks further from home than ever before

CNN: Can a Mainstream News Outlet Survive?

In a polarized era, it’s tough to be nonpartisan. What’s a mainstream news organization to do?

Is Obama Overselling His Russia Arms Control Deal?

There are disturbing signs that the Obama Administration is overselling its progress on the new arms control treaty with Russia, raising unrealistic hopes that Moscow would genuinely help in addressing the danger from Iran

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 27, 2010

quash \KWOSH\, transitive verb:

1. (Law) To abate, annul, overthrow, or make void; as, “to quash an indictment.”
2. To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely; as, “to quash a rebellion.”

Pictures with Mercedes Concept Shooting Break

Here is the virtual model of Mercedes Concept Shooting Break. Now you can see the real concept presented by Daimler Group at Beijing Auto Show 2010.

And much more pictures are avaiable here,

Photo

DJIA: Down 213 points to 10,991.

NASDAQ: Down 51 points to 2471.

S&P 500: Down 28 points to 1183.

Commodities:
Oil: Down 2.5% or $2.09 to $82.11 a barrel.
Gold: Up 1.5% or $17.00 to $1171 an ounce.
Silver: Down 0.8% or $0.15 to $18.22 an ounce.

And the big shocker:

Goldman sachs was up!

Now here’s what you need to know as you leave work today:

• Today, Goldman Sachs spent hours testifying for a Senate subcommittee about its CDO deals. Read our live blog here.
• Standard & Poors downgraded the credit ratings of Greece, which triggered a sell off in US equity markets.
• Carl Levin was more than kind enough to remind us that ABACUS was a “shitty deal.”
• Oh, and Portugal and Spain also got downgraded by Standard & Poors, causing a massive flight from the Euro.
• Gold priced in Euros soars to nosebleed highs, courtesy of European’s sovereign debt crisis.

Join the conversation about this story »

Web sites are buzzing over claims that remains from Noah’s Ark may have been found on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. The finders, led by an evangelical group, say they are “99.9 percent” that a wooden structure found on the mountainside was part of a ship that housed the Biblical Noah, his family and a menagerie of creatures during a giant flood 4,800 years ago.

But researchers who have spent decades studying the region – and fending off past claims of ark discoveries – caution that a boatload of skepticism is in order.

…(read more)